Wednesday, May 6, 2009

two TV shows to talk about today. of course, one is deadliest catch (natch) but the other is a first for the blog...how i met your mother (HIMYM).

some people have called HIMYM the "friends" of the aughts. while i don't necessarily agree with that (i never liked friends much), i do see some similarities. both are VERY contemporary. friends dealt with being in your late 20s-early 30s in the 1990s and HIMYM deals with the same age group in the 2000s. i particularly liked the contemporary-ness of this week's episode. the marshall sub-plot was basically one large graph jam! shout-out (graph jam! is part of the cheezburger network, which is home to one of my newest favorite websites, failblog. im sure i will write about failblog in the future). the marshall sub-plot was easily the funniest part of the episode.

but the real point of this post is to weigh in on whether or not we met the mother monday night (for those who don't know, HIMYM is a sitcom about how the main character, ted, met his children's mother. each episode starts with adult ted telling his kids this long and convoluted tale of how he met their mother and hilarity ensues. it is a mystery who the mother is, but its a great plot device to keep the story moving forward). i am going to go out on a limb here and assume that none of my reader(s) watch the show, so i am going to throw some spoilers out, so if you do watch the show and haven't seen monday's episode, stop reading.

at the end of monday's episode, after all the twists of fate that lead ted to stand on the corner under the yellow umbrella, we find out that it is stella who taps ted on the shoulder. the entire episode leads us to believe that at the end, we are going to meet the mother. however, after careful review and analysis, i DO NOT THINK that stella is the mother. there are a few hints and giveaways that led me to this conclusion. first of all, the ted-stella relationship sucked, and i think the producers know that. even if you like sarah chalke (of scrubs fame), you had to hate the ted-stella dynamic. the ted-stella relationship turned ted into what i hate the most about his character: a whiney, whimpy, post-modern, metrosexual, with "feelings". those character traits are most certainly un-funny. the show is at its best when ted is free to mess around with marshall, barney, robin, and lilly, not looking like a lost puppy hanging onto stella. second, they can't make stella the mother. the show needs the conflict & resolution of wondering who the mother is to sustain itself, and as far as i know, the show isn't planning on ending anytime soon. third, the wording of the episode never EXPLICITLY said "this is when i met your mother" or something of that nature. the narration leads you to believe that ted meets the mother on the corner, but the wording is crafted in such a way that there is enough wiggle room for it not to be the mother.

one more comment about HIMYM before i get onto the deadliest catch part of this post (sometimes these things get long, don't they?). the character of ted - i have always kinda been on the fence about ted. there are times when i cannot stand him (see stella, relationship with) and there are times when he is great. i have always thought that the producers of HIMYM wanted ted to be a modern john cusack-type character. the first season of HIMYM, ted is clearly a cusack wannabe. they kinda look the same. his character tries to be witty like cusack. ted is an architect - can you imagine any profession more suited for a cusack character than a misanthropic architect? i can't. however, when ted is in john cusack mode, he sucks. the show excels when ted is "just one of the guys", giving shit to marshall and barney. that is the ted i like. i hope there is more of that ted left.

so FINALLY, deadliest catch. some interesting developments:

i wonder how long matt has aboard the northwestern. last season he didn't get along with jake very well and this season matt looks like he is slipping a bit and jake is really trying to earn his share as a full deckhand.

charlie gaspar, the old hungarian dude aboard the new boat lisa marie, is AWESOME. i can't wait to get to know him better.

speaking of the lisa marie, man is that boat small!

i wonder how many boats used to be the size of the lisa marie. if you go back to the first season of deadliest catch it featured the last season of derby fishing for crab. derby fishing was a system where the season was open for a set amount of time and the boats could catch as much as they wanted in the alloted timeframe. however, that changed a few years back and the state of alaska instituted a quota system where a certain amount of crab could be caught each year. i don't know if its an overall quota or a per-boat quota, but my guess is that the bigger boats (cornelia marie, time bandit, northwestern) bought up other boats permits so they could increase the size of their catch. this led to a drastic reduction in the size of the king crab fleet, and i guess was a system that favored the bigger boats. how the lisa marie, a 75ft. boat can compete with the big boys (some are 150ft. +) is beyond me, but it will be very interesting watching how that boat fishes and comparing it to the others.